Coffee puzzle leaves Twitter totally stumped – which cup would be filled up first?

Daily Mail ^ | 10 November 2017 | Bianca London

[mairdie]

Brainteaser shows a funnel of coffee being poured into different pipes

Poster asked her followers to guess which cup received coffee first

People were left stumped by the confusing brainteaser on social media

[mewzilla]

I won't reveal the answer, which is at the link, but I will warn that this is one of those Duh!!! puzzles where observation is more important than calculation. :-)

[mairdie]

Article says no.

[Big Red Badger]

Two cremes and sugars!

Number 9.

[Mercat]

5

[cincinnati65]

Seriously, if this has Twitter "stumped", we're in sad shape. The answer is pretty obvious, if you look at the blocked paths (where the line is across the pipe). There's only one cup with an unobstructed pipe.

I've seen several different variants of this with MUCH harder configurations. I have no idea why this one would leave Twitter "stumped".

[DoubleNickle]

#5

[Mercat]

9 is blocked.

[mewzilla]

Because our powers of observation suck :-)

[mairdie]

Never done a puzzle with lots of other people. That was FUN!

[Mercat]

4 is blocked.

[Flick Lives]

Dammit. Just realized #9 is also blocked.

This puzzel is really a puzzle by mis-direction. You start thinking about the level of the pipes, and how water flows, missing the tiny blockages set in place in the diagram.

[Gay State Conservative]

I was gonna say #4 but I didn’t notice the blockage.It’s clearly #9.

[William of Barsoom]

Number 5. In fact, it’s the only cup that will fill at all.

All the others are blocked.

[mairdie]

>>Because our powers of observation suck :-)

Mine sure do. I didn’t notice the width of the pipes at first, and I designed the bathroom plumbing!

[petercooper]

Wow. Missed it. Time for coffee

[Mercat]

9 is blocked.

[exDemMom]

It’s pretty obvious. Given that there are open pipes only to 5 and 9, it would have to be one of those two. Furthermore, there is a large reservoir near #5 that would fill first, and the pipe leading to #9 is lower than the pipe leading to #5, I think cup 9 would be overflowing without any coffee ever making it to cup 5.

[Ouderkirk]

It’s number 5.

All are blocked except #5

[Gay State Conservative]

Yikes...#9 is blocked too.Damn!

[deweyfrank]

I meant 5.